In the first post of this topic James described many options to buy the noveland their pros and cons, you can find lots of useful information there

Personally I'd suggest a Rober Moss translation it is smoother and uses the more common pinyin names (it comes down to personal preference though);I would also suggest to buy an unabridged version, I personally don't see the point of reading an incomplete book.I have the 4 volume paperback edition Tao Qian linked, which is fine.I also know of a hardcover 5 volumes edition, beautiful but very expensive.http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/ ... gsarch-20/

@Tao Qian I never knew of the 5 volume paperback edition you linked, do you know wheter there is more content than the 4 volume paperback one (notes/maps) other then the chinese text?

Last edited by Aygor on Mon Feb 17, 2014 4:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.

A friend of mine bought it and it looks fine, paper is a bit thin for my taste but the rest is fine, I'm thinking in buying it.

I checked the illustrations in the 4 volumes edition to see if there was that picture, it turns out it has (1st volume, 91st page) a different illustration of that scene but although details differ the characters are all in the exact same position and stance.Funnily enough I assumed for no apparent reason that all the Moss Roberts translations had the same illustration (just, maybe, more in the 5 volume editions) and did not expect them to be different; I also did not expect different portraits of the same scene to be so similiar, the iconography seems to be tight.Paper is kinda thin in the 4 volume edition too unfortunately.

Aygor wrote:I checked the illustrations in the 4 volumes edition to see if there was that picture, it turns out it has (1st volume, 91st page) a different illustration of that scene but although details differ the characters are all in the exact same position and stance.Funnily enough I assumed for no apparent reason that all the Moss Roberts translations had the same illustration (just, maybe, more in the 5 volume editions) and did not expect them to be different; I also did not expect different portraits of the same scene to be so similiar, the iconography seems to be tight.Paper is kinda thin in the 4 volume edition too unfortunately.

Sorry for a silly question but I am easily confused. Is there a three volume UCP edition Hardback edition of the Moss Roberts translation? I have vol III dated 1994. Or would this be part of the four volume set? it ends in a poem and the preceeding words are 'marking the highlights of the era'